Time is of the essence - travel app speeds vary greatly for leading brands

The humble travel app faces huge challenges when competing in the world of consumer shopping and buying of products related to trips.

Firstly there is the trend that travellers tend to not have many apps on their devices now, preferring to have a favourite and sticking with it.

Also, consumers are not always directed to a brand's app in search, but rather to its mobile website.

Finally, purchases are simply not made as frequently, compared to other products in ecommerce.

In other words, the chances of dislodging a popular consumer travel app in the mind of a consumer can be hard.

The performance of app can go some time to creating loyalty, according to Packetzoom,.

Image load and search result speed is one area that can be measured and then improved, a mobile technology provider says.

The company obviously has a product to sell but its analysis of some of the leading travel brand apps in the market is interesting.

The research found a large discrepancy between the likes of Airbnb and Expedia, for example, with search times over double in length between the two brands.

PacketZoom CEO, Shlomi Gian, says "performance is of the essence for every type of app", but especially for those dedicated to travel services.

"Consumers have come to expect speedy content downloads, and when it takes too long they don’t necessarily blame the networks or external factors - they blame the apps, and they’ll close out of them or sometimes even uninstall them altogether when things are too slow.
"It is crucial that app developers do all they can to make sure that their apps don’t experience any undue delays."